Many of today’s school–reform initiatives threaten
to create “reform schools,”those places where we used
to send delinquent youth. These were basically lock–ups,
offering education behind bars with an emphasis on strict discipline
and rote memorization. Similarly, the cultural literacy and high–stakes
standards movements threaten to lock the school doors and throw
away the key…Instead, we need a school–reform model
that focuses on the principle of sustainability—figuring
out how to live within our means at both a local and global level.

More than two–thirds of all elementary
and secondary teachers include environment in their curriculum.
But the quality is uneven at best

Of the “four pillars”discussed in this paper, this last
one is perhaps the most important—the bit that schools are supposed
to be all about—pedagogy. What’s more, environmental education
is perhaps the most well–grounded—the most established
field of all those we review here.

It was more than thirty years ago that environmental education was
widely introduced into our nation’s school systems. Consequently
the United States has thousands of school districts, as well as many
wonderful organizations fostering a broad array of programs. Overall,
almost two–thirds of all elementary and secondary teachers include
environment in their curriculum.92 And
for instance, in the San Francisco Bay Area alone (admittedly a hot
bed of environmentalism), there are more than 200 independent organizations
providing environmental education programs to schools.93

A FAILING GRADE

Yet the quality and coherence of what is taught and what is learned
is uneven at best. The organizations providing environmental education
programming often operate in a fragmented and piecemeal fashion. At
the same time, they are extremely homogenous, failing to incorporate
ethnic and racial diversity into their own ranks in an increasingly
diverse society. Pedagogically speaking, environmental education is
often quite isolated; rather than being integrated into curricula,
environmental education is often seen as a supplement to it. Teachers
are not trained or given support to do otherwise. Overall there is
a lack of “pre–service”education in teacher training
and credential programs. Environmental curricula do not generally “scope
and sequence”or build strategically year by year from K through
12th grade. The big national environmental groups and foundations have
not made any significant long–term investments in advocacy around
this topic although some do have programs and produce curricula. Indeed,
there is no national advocacy group that works on behalf of environmental
education, although there are a handful of relatively weak professional
associations, as well as state–based coalitions and alliances.94

Neither state nor federal government agencies have put near sufficient
resources into environmental education over the years. The US EPA spends
a paltry $8 million on environmental education—the equivalent
of 3 cents per citizen. Overall the Federal government spends an estimated
$160 million on environmental education (for all ages), while the 32
states that formally support environmental education efforts gave $7.3
million to in–school programs in 1997. Overall, despite insufficient
data, environmental education expert Jim Elder estimates that “total
annual Environmental Literacy funding from federal, state, and private
sources in this country probably amounts to less than $1 per person.
Clearly, the first order of business in moving the field forward is
to increase this figure by an order of magnitude.”Nor, in this
era of focus on educational standards, have the states or federal government
come up with any type of mandatory standard–based approach to
environmental or ecological literacy in terms of national standards,
state science standards, or teacher training standards.95

What’s more, environmental education is under siege from the
right–wing and has been for more than a decade. Ideologues from
think–tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, the Competitive
Enterprise Institute and Hoover Institution, along with a gaggle of
polluting corporations and politicians all attack the legitimacy of
the concept of environmental education itself. Epitomized by the book
Facts, Not Fear: Teaching Children About the Environment, this coalition
challenges the scientific “proof”that many environmental
problems exist, and advocates, among other things, multiple science–based
perspectives on environmental topics.96 This
translates, for instance, into giving the perspective of the tiny minority
of mostly industry–funded scientists an equal say on the issue
of global warming. Interestingly, this anti–environmental education
discourse is in many respects the antithesis of the approach advocated
by the Precautionary Principle.

Environmental education
is underfunded and under seige

In parallel with this strong critique of environmental education,
virtually the same group of foundations, corporations and institutions
have developed a relatively sophisticated strategy to appropriate it.
Especially gifted at this aspect are large polluting corporations which
have produced biased, self–serving curricula that they disseminate
for free to under–funded schools.97 But
also of note is a relatively new organization, the Environmental Literacy
Council which is funded by some of the same corporations and foundations
that funded the publishers of Facts Not Fear. ELC’s funders include
Georgia Pacific, International Paper, Lockheed Martin and Exxon Mobil,
as well as conservative foundations such as Charles Koch, Sarah Scaife
and others.98

Given all of the challenges the environmental education field faces,
it is no wonder that despite its longevity, its efficacy seems to be
diminishing. Exhibit A is a survey of more than 400,000 incoming freshmen
at more than 700 colleges and universities nation–wide. The UCLA–based
poll found that in the ten year period between 1993 and 2003, the percentage
of students who saw cleaning up the environment as an important goal
declined from close to 40 percent to just over 20 percent.99 And
while the figures are as much a reflection of the moment in which our
entire country is living, this is certainly not the result K–12
environmental educators are looking for.

TEACHING GREEN

Much has been written and said about the environmental education field—the
need for more funding, more coherence, and greater advocacy on its
behalf. We’ll limit ourselves here to how environmental education
can contribute to greening our school communities and vice versa.

A good place to start is to take a brief look at the theory and practice
of what has come to be known as “place–based education.”Analyst
Jack Chin defines it as follows:

Place–based education provides students with opportunities
to connect with themselves, their community and their local environment
through hands–on, real–world learning experiences. It
is rooted in the integrated core curricular activities of science,
social studies, communication arts and fine arts, and is expanded
upon and applied by extending the classroom into the schoolyard and
the neighborhood. This approach enables students to see that their
learning is relevant to their world, to take pride in the place in
which they live, to connect with the rest of the world in a natural
way and to develop into concerned and contributing citizens.100

Greening our schools can
create a grand teachable moment

Chin and people like David Sobel, who works with COSEED, a network
of place–based environmental educators in the Northeast, have
documented dozens of examples of students increasing academic achievement
through place–based education, while also learning about and
contributing to improving the context in which they live and where
their school sits.101 Such
an approach also has the added benefit of potentially increasing the
long–term environmental and social justice commitment of the
students involved. As Sobel argues, “Authentic environmental
commitment emerges out of firsthand experiences with real places on
a small, manageable scale [over time].”102

What better place to start than in the place known as school. Imagine
a central element of national school reform being a curriculum designed
to teach students about the resources their schools consume and involving
them in making such consumption more sustainable. Imagine teaching
them about toxics issues in and around a school and involving them
in minimizing their use; about gardens and food systems, and involving
them in growing their own food; and about the school’s place
in the community, and for that matter the world, and involving them
in helping make all three—school, community, planet—better
places. Indeed, incorporating a strong, participatory curricular component
to school–greening efforts is, in some respects, the ultimate
place–based education.

Also imagine federal funding for such a place–based environmental
education effort equaling the $584 million currently allocated for
school–based drug education programs. Depending on how you look
at it, that’s triple the amount of all current federal funding
for environmental education, less than what ten F–16 fighter
jets cost the Department of Defense, or around two months’worth
of costs for the ongoing occupation of Iraq.103

5 Steps for Effective Environmental Education

Learner–Oriented –Programs support the development
of personal meaning through the learning process, with emphasis
on age–appropriateness and ongoing (even life–long)
learning

Promotes Wonder –Programs incorporate inquiry and discovery–based
approaches that build appreciation for the natural and built
environment

In Context of Place/Community –Programs place learning
in the context of the local, relate directly to the learner’s
life and culture, and encourage civic engagement

Focus on Relationships –Programs forge connections
across and outward from specific areas of study –integrate
across issues such as water quality, energy production and
economic development; cross disciplinary boundaries of academic
subjects such as science and language arts; connect classroom
and out–of–school learning; relate the local to
the regional and global.

Source: Jack Chin, “Bay Area Environmental
Education: How Do We Know We’re Making a Difference?”Draft
Report, Blueprint Research and Design, April 30, 2004.

Once again, place–based education focused on the school site
is already happening, albeit without the funding and on a relatively
small, fragmented scale. Various education departments in states as
far ranging as Oregon, Wisconsin and Maryland have developed Green
Schools programs that integrate addressing school–based environmental
issues with involving students and teachers in the solution.104 For
instance, the Wisconsin Green & Healthy Schools Program “encourages
teachers, staff, students and parents to work together to use the school,
its grounds, and the whole community as learning tools to help teach,
promote, and apply healthy, safe and environmentally sound practices.”105

In fact, many school–greening initiatives are stronger with
or even dependent upon student participation. This is particularly
true for many of the efforts discussed in this report. For instance,
the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Integrated Pest Management
program relies on student participation in keeping schools pest–free
and thereby avoiding pesticide use. The district has engaged in a major
educational program to involve children in pest–control by encouraging
them to clean up after they eat, not to leave old food in their lockers
to remove paper clutter where pests can hide, to keep food and drinks
in sealed containers, and to tell their teachers if they see pests.106

Similarly, an integral part of building high–performance schools
is the ongoing teachable moment they create. Lessons on energy, for
instance, can be particularly poignant when discussing solar panels
on the roof and how they are lighting up the building. Or as British
Prime Minister Tony Blair envisioned as he discussed energy–autonomous
schools in his speech on climate change, “Our students won’t
just be told about sustainable development, they will see and work
within it: a living, learning, place in which to explore what a sustainable
lifestyle means.”107

And central to a farm–to–school initiative designed to
improve nutrition, is its educational aspect. As the Center for Food
and Justice explains: “Connections with the local farms and agriculture
help children better understand the cycle of food –how and who
grows it, and how it impacts their bodies, health and the community.
All these experiences complete the educational framework that motivates
children towards healthier eating habits that will last a lifetime.”108 And
most obviously, the myriad green school yard and garden projects are
all about teaching children strong ecological principles and connection
with the earth via sustainable agriculture.

Various initiatives also encourage a grassroots approach to greening
our school systems. These bottom–up, participatory efforts engage
teachers, students, staff and administrators in jointly investigating
the environmental conditions in and impacts of their schools. Once
assessed, these student–led groups then come up with pragmatic
action plans to address the problems. Schools that follow through on
the process are awarded a green flag. Notable among these efforts are
the fledgling Green Flag Schools program run by the Center for Health,
Environment and Justice and the Oregon Green Schools Association in
the US.109 Internationally,
the Eco–Schools International Network operates a similar, but
much more highly evolved effort in more than 11,000 schools throughout
the European Union, with fledgling programs in Eastern and Central
Europe, South Africa, China, the Caribbean and South America.

These initiatives place a central focus on strong student participation
in decision–making, as well as community involvement in addressing
environmental issues in a school—thereby teaching advocacy and
democratic participation.110

The fact that such place–based/school–based initiatives
are happening all across the globe is a cause for optimism. We live
in an increasingly globalized world, evermore connected with one another.
Our communities run outward in concentric circles, from the local park
to the global commons. Place–based education in this context
presents us with the challenge and the opportunity to think and act
both locally and globally simultaneously. We can begin to take this
on by understanding that our schools do not exist in isolation of the
communities in which they reside. Rather they are integral members
of the larger society and the larger ecosystem. As such, whatever action
one takes within a school is connected to the reality around it. If
a school reduces its waste, the burden on the local landfill will also
be reduced. If it generates its own power, local and global pollution
will be reduced. If it buys its food from a local farmer, community
and sustainability will be enhanced.

If we can invest the time and money to teach our children these lessons
of precaution and sustainability, they can play an integral role in
helping make our schools and communities more sustainable and healthy.
Moreover, we will be training the next generation of leaders to think
and act from both a precautionary and proactive approach, both locally
and globally in relationship to the environment. If we are successful,
the planet will be a healthier and more just place than it otherwise
would be in the next generation.

Work with and encourage environmental advocacy groups
to work collaboratively to integrate place–based,
environmental learning into the curriculum, highlighting
the benefits for achieving academic standards as well
as improving the environment.

Pressure school districts, along with local, state
and federal governments to do the following:

2. School Districts and Local Governments Should:

Adapt frameworks that integrate environmental education
and student participation into school greening initiatives.

Promote partnerships with environmental education providers
(nonprofit and public agencies) to help integrate environmental
learning into the curriculum

3. State Education Departments and Governments Should:

Adapt frameworks, like that of the Oregon Green Schools
Association, that integrate environmental education and
student participation into school greening initiatives.

Significantly increase funding for environmental education
using environmental fines or fees as a source for this
funding.

Make place–based environmental education central
to the development of state–wide environmental education
standards and curricula as part of the Leave No Child Behind
mandate for science standards, as well as independently
of them. A panel of environmental education groups should
vigorously review such standards and curricula, so as to
avoid industry co–optation.

4. The Federal Government Should:

Significantly increase funding for environmental education,
using environmental fines or fees as a source for this
funding.